Page:The crater; or, Vulcan's peak.djvu/61

OR, VULCAN S PEAK. 55 " Do you think it possible, Bob, for us two to take care of the ship, should we even manage to get her into deep water again?" "Well, that is not so soon answered, Mr. Woolston," returned Bob. " We re both on us stout, and healthy, and of good courage, Mr. Mark; but twould be a desperate long way for two hands to carry a wessel of four hundred tons, to take the old Cocus from this here anchorage, all the way to the coast of America; a.*-* short of the coast there s no ra al hope for us. Hows~ ^r, sir, that is a sub ject that need give us no consarn." " I do not see that, Bob ; we shall have to do it, unless we fall in with something at sea, could we only once get the vessel out from among these reefs." "Ay, ay, sir could we get her out from among these reefs, indeed ! There s the rub, Mr. Woolston ; but I fear t will never be rub and go. " " You think, then, we are too fairly in for it, ever to get the ship clear ?" " Such is just my notion, Mr. Woolston, on that subject, and I ve no wish to keep it a secret. In my judgment, was poor Captain Crutchely alive and back at his post, and all hands just as they was this time twenty-four hours since, and the ship where she is now, that here she would have to stay. Nothing short of kedging can ever take the wes sel clear of the reefs to windward on us, and man-of-war kedging could hardly do it, then." " I am sorry to hear you say this," answered Mark, gloomily, " though I feared as much myself." " Men is men, sir, and you can get no more out on em than is in em. I looked well at these reefs, sir, when aloft, and they re what I call as hopeless affairs as ever I laid eyes on. If they lay in any sort of way, a body might have some little chance of getting through em, but they don t lay, no how. T would be Muff and keep her away every half minute or so, should we attempt to beat up among em ; and who is there aboard here to brace up, and haul aft, and ease off, and to swing yards sich as our nT " I was not altogether without the hope, Bob, of getting the ship into clear water ; though I have thought it would